Editing Rex: Final Days of an Empire (section)

== Factions ==

* The Harkonnen (or Barony of Letnev) play like Germany in ''Axis & Allies''.  They begin with an advantage in numbers of treachery cards, strategy cards, good forces and wealth but it's all downhill if they don't use it to knock some others down because everyone else's strengths scale better as the game progresses.
* The Spacing Guild (or Emirates of Hacan) starts off pretty weak but accrues wealth as others bring more forces in since all other factions need to pay a tax to them if they revive/recruit soldiers & leaders (latter only if the Thleilaxu aren’t played); their ability to bring in reserves cheaply and move about the board freely favors "hit them where they're weak" strategies.
*  The Emperor's (or Lazax Empire) superpower is money, and specifically getting a lot of it and being able to spend it to boost his allies. (This is because you pay ''him'' when you buy a treachery card.) Alongside a couple of [[MEQ|super-units]] with twice the stats of [[GEQ|regular soldiers]], they tend to be heavyweights early on but run out of steam once everyone buys up all the cards they’re permitted to hold. If the Emperor is gonna win it's typically gonna be by an alliance with someone.
* The Atreides (or Universities of Jol-Nar) get to fucking cheat ("Because he IS the kwisatz haderach!").  Normally factions bid on treachery cards blind. The Atreides get to scry and take notes; like, this is in the rules, they're allowed to take written notes about cards and who gained them and nobody else is.  
* The Fremen (or Federation of Sol) start out poor and divided up.  Can ride the sandworms or get out of their way in advance, where every other faction gets nommed by them. They also get a special spawning point on top of a stronghold.
* The Bene Gesserit (or Xxcha Kingdom) as previously mentioned set their own win prediction and if its true [[Just As Planned|they win alone]].  They also get to mess with other people's battles by telling them which cards to use or not use (one per battle); it doesn't take much imagination to see how this is really fucking broken if they're in an alliance with the Atreides (such an alliance is by no means invincible but it does put the ball in everyone else's court to crush them with numbers).  Easily the weakest faction in both forces and wealth to compensate for that (although they also don't have to fight if they don't want to by disguising their warriors as diplomats and get free units on the universal neutral space, so getting rid of them is ''hard''). 

Outside of the base games, the Dune versions of the game also come with an expansion that adds the Ixians and Thleilaxu but they’re an optional add-on. Unless you’re bored and with extra cash, they’re something that you can live without. If you're curious:

* The Ixians have two kinds of army units that count as 1/2 or 2 units of every other player's army, respectively, and start out with a special movable Stronghold that counts for victory.
* The Thleilaxu take over the "leader revival/recruitment" part of the game like the Guild takes over the "reinforcements revival/recruitment" part.

Additionally, a new expansion featuring CHOAM and House Richese has been announced for Spring 2022.

* House Richese are sneaky bastards whose main gimmick is that they can manipulate the bidding phase, potentially undercutting the Emprah, and can hide how many forces they have in one place with a "NO-Field". Like the Empreror, they start will all their guys off-world.
* CHOAM are the rich one percenters who pay to win with spice laundering during the Charity phase and can even tank the economy just to stick it to everyone else. They also start will all their forces off-world.

For those filthy casuals who want a more streamlined version, GF9 also offers ''Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy''.  ''Conquest & Diplomacy'' reduces the factions to 4 (Atredies, Harkonnen, Fremen, Imperium) and gets rid of some of the jankiest rules.  The card auction is gone, replaced by simply drawing new hands.  The old alliance system is also absent and the Imperium has been beefed up a bit compared to the old Emperor.  Combat however remains basically unchanged and the visuals have been updated to reflect the new movie.  The resulting game plays somewhat like classic Dune but faster and with more emphasis on the spice economy and ground game, at the expense of depth.  Baby's First Dune, so to speak.  

{{Board Games}}
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